Sheol
by TownMT
Summary: He's dead, Watson doesn't care, how could he? Zombies don't mourn.


He's dead, Watson doesn't care, how could he?

Zombies don't mourn.

Well, at least according to the ZMeDNet app, they don't. 'Incapable of cognitive abilities such as memory retention, empathy, critical thinking; the undead were only capable of decreasing the survival rate and survivor population. Shoot on site. Avoid hospitals and cemeteries, any corpse that has been dead for up to three years may reanimate. Run.' It had been memorized, obsessively and routinely, like a desperate prayer before he had turned. Now, the information seemed a natural blue warning.

Yet, for not being able to retain cognitive ability, here he is, thinking. Worse, thinking about the past, which, much to the empty support of ZMeDNet, he could only recall fragments of. Most of the fragments were simple names and information that he dismissed, it was the blurred images hovering at his consciousness that were the issue. It was the flash of panic, terror, and grief whenever a ghost fell across his vision that would make him want to stop and sit.

He doesn't really remember the year anymore – or the month or the day- and he doesn't really feel the biting chill of the approaching winter, he doesn't really feel anything anymore. His clothes suggest warmer weather with the thin shirt and jacket, his gun states a survivor – stated as it hangs untouched and tucked into a stolen holster.

He's forgotten how to count, but he's pretty sure he's been shot fifty-seven times by this point. It sounds like a lot, and he has been shot a lot, the number keeps spinning in his head.

He knows, or knew, that if he had lived, Sherlock would have survived, thrived, really, in apocalyptic London. Conducting experiments - he felt a tug and stopped, then he limped forward.

Watson shuffled past the moldy eggs and into the dairy aisle; from an old habit he pulled open the door to the milk, long well expired, yellowed, and soiled._ The milk's gone funny._

He saw Sherlock, this faded shadow, creeping consistently closer to the edges of his consciousness, whispering antiquated words, dragging up undistinguishable memories, like he was alive again. Sometimes, he felt alive again.

Watson shut the door, a click resounded.

It didn't come from the door.

Watson stilled, and hunched lower, waiting for another noise. The zombie sucked in a moan and shifted around towards the aisles. Carefully, quietly, Watson limped towards the-the c-crisps, towards the crinkle of aluminum bags. _Highly flammable._

He fumbled and limped faster as the noises got louderwith saliva trailing and dripping down his mangled jaw.

There were two survivors, a father and daughter, or siblings, one was tall, male, but very young – tender -, he was stuffing their bag full of crinkling-crinkling shiny bags of-of old…but the child, she/he/it was looking down the opposite direction of the aisle. Juicy, young, no weapons – _no defense, take the outer force down, movemovemove! _– he lunged with a garbled yell, nails digging into the bare arm of the shrieking girl. Juicy, warm, delicious moremoremoremoremore – then there was a sickening crunch as the man swung the cricket bat down, hard, onto the crook of his right shoulder.

Watson crumpled on the floor, shoulder stiffer but rolled to the side and lunged at the man weeping over the dead child, knocking the man against the wall with crinkly stuff falling on top. His nails dug into fabric and ripped, ripped, tearing until he could feel the delicious juice run over his fingers. The frantic man desperately groped for the dropped bat, but Watson pinned the arm and tore into the exposed flesh.

It wasn't delicious. Whatever the ZMeDNet app says, or any other survivors' say, raw human flesh doesn't taste good, but it doesn't taste bad either – frankly, it just doesn't taste at all. It was satisfying and temporary, it made the burning itch inside his chest dissipate, and that was it. Animals worked the same, though with shorter relief, but there weren't any dogs or cats left now. There aren't that many survivors left either…

The man kicked, punched, pushed, and, even wailed, but went still when more groans filled the store as other Zombies stumbled onto Watson's feast. There were at least ten, eight too many for Watson to handle, that snarled in hunger at the meat. Watson snarled back in return, but could do nothing when the swarm lunged.

The man chocked when the rest fell upon him, his screams swallowed by the gnashing and overgrown nails. Snarling and hurriedly devouring as much meat, Watson couldn't stop the small mob to consume the rest of his two meals. He was lucky enough to get the upper arm.

Now shuffling back with fresh blood dripping from his maw, Watson had to admit that some part of him felt horrible. It wasn't really a large part, and a lot of the time he couldn't understand why he felt guilty. But, it was a necessary cycle of things, he concluded. It wasn't his fault that Watson couldn't understand. They had all been humans; he used to live too. He used to have friends and family, faces he recognized and talked to, laughed with and shared drinks at-at parties _Christmas drinkies_, hated and fought with, loved, protected, cared for and, and the, adventures! Adventures with Sherlock! For an overwhelming moment, he felt happiness. But he didn't understand; couldn't feel, and wouldn't think – so Watson gurgled and carried on limping down the street to his home.

It was a dusty and broken flat connected to a store with this giant shattered window. The black door had long been ripped off its hinges, its numbers lost underneath the splintered wood and glass. The wallpaper sullied by blood and fingernail marks _laughing, ridiculous, completely, fun _and the furniture,destroyed. He limped over the mess and towards the stairs glancing at the broken door to his right side, watching as twenty or so flies buzz around. _Boys have to be nice…_

He stumbled forward, gradually working up the damn stairs.

He died in the living room. That's where he woke up, so he had to have died there. He woke in a puddle of brown blood mixed with yellow pus, bandaged, and with a chunk of his right knee missing. The doors to the stairs were locked, tables stacked against on the other side, and the brown had stained into the red chair he was propped in.

Now, as he finally reached the top, maneuvering around the toppled tables and through the main door frame (the door ripped apart) into the flat, the chair was stained brown and stunk of rot. The walls were just as bad as downstairs; blood dried over the paper, fingernails had shredded into them in anger - three nails actually had stuck into the wall – and dust ate away everything else. It was grungy and grimy; cockroaches scampered into the kitchen, or to darker corners, as he limped further in. But it was home. He let out a groan as he flopped into the tainted chair, rolling his head with cracks and pops, and relaxing as well as a stiff corpse could. He stared at the grey chair opposite of him. Sometimes he could almost see him, so close, but it would always be a shadow.

He spent most of his day sitting. From what flashes he could pick from, zombies weren't supposed to do that; Shuffling, groaning, endless wandering everywhere, followed by terror, blood, and death – that was expected. However, in reality, zombies did not endlessly wander. Yes, most of the zombies that he had encountered were constantly ambling, but in fixed directions. Even when he limped out, it was within the limits of familiarity, always tipping to the edge of his lost past, but never far enough to spill the cup of memories. That was the true fate of his kind; wandering externally and internally to the skeletal structures that elicited warmth while desperately clawing at the cold fragments that once made up their identity, whether it was spoilt milk, stained chairs, and dead men's names.

Sometimes, if he concentrated hard enough, he could remember how to read certain words.

He knew what _name_, _gun_, and _adventure_ were. He remembered when he had, out of curiosity, explored the other room connected to the living room (he no longer tried going to the upstairs' room after falling twice). There he found stacks of journals, grey and blue, in boxes. He picked one up, skimmed the pages, and found he could recall the words written in stout ink. It was the third journal that he found the name of Sherlock – _Think of Sherlock, the women had screamed_ – and remembered the man. It was ten journals later that he noticed the au-auth-_blogger's_- other name; Watson. It was the only part he could read. He decided it must be his name.

A faint scream brought Watson out of his thoughts and felt a familiar boil overcome him.

Food.

Watson shuffled towards the gunfire, fellow zombies shuffling along, down the dark street. Noon was setting and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to manage limping around the fallen lampposts and abandoned cars. Watson was falling further behind the rest of the horde.

He remembered that food was running scarce in these parts of London; many survivors have already left the quarantined city for safety zones like Glasgow and, while there were still hundreds of thousands of zombies milling in London, many have migrated north. Hordes were the safest method of travel and hunting, but, now, it was falling into a competition. Fastest got an arm, leg, or even an organ or two. Slowest got trampled.

Watson stopped at the edge of the pulsing horde before climbing on top of the nearest car. There must have been hundreds swarming around, clawing at the one central building. Pouring from motorways, alleys, snarling and pulsing; it was the biggest zombie horde that Watson had ever seen in his undead life. Police cars' sirens shrieked, the blare of red and blue flashing across the decayed flesh, as more zombies pushed against each other. Four more gun shots ring out and Watson notices the barricade around the building. Overturned trucks and stacked cars covered in barbed wire, pointy poles jutting out at every end, bottles filled with bright crashing down on heads lighting the skulls ablaze.

It was a hopeless battle, but valiant, he wondered how many survivors were stocked inside. Not enough to feed the horde.

The building wasn't that far from where Watson was swaying and the entrance was curved to his direction, but the horde was too thick and Watson knew he would get trampled within seconds. He scanned the building before sliding (falling) off the car to quickly limp down an alley. Watson avoided the courtyard where there were swarms of zombies, and quickly stole further into the shadows.

It was there that he found a loose window, closed, but unlocked. The survivors must have gone through here. Using his waning strength, he lifted the window high enough to awkwardly crawl onto and fall into the filthy halls of the hospital with a loud, wet smack. He leaned on the wall as he shakily stood back up and closed the window, swaying even more, with black goo dripping from his forehead. Watson shuffled forward towards the main building, careful to remain out of view to the horde and to the survivors.

Would they be able to kill him?

Watson slowly limped past the abandoned offices, misted eyes glued to the path ahead.

Would he wake up again?

Other zombies that got shot in the head didn't get up, but Watson never stayed around to check.

He's seen the corpses though; he couldn't tell if they were zombie or survivor, didn't really matter. Nothing really mattered anymore. The survivors could keep shooting the hordes, and burrow in their safe zones and delusions while zombies could keep wandering in the lost limbo of identity and unrelenting need – but the process didn't matter because there would be, will never be, no real result.

That was reality.

It was a null game; voided by the inability of progression of either party, without a possible winner, and left with only one solution: death. But, even that solution had been negated by the game. He, and those of his kind trapped in the same loophole, are testament of the futility of the process. Testament to far more implications then he can understand. This tabula rasa cursed upon his reincarnation, which leaked the previous life into his habits and wanderings, had been the catalyst to his final revelation.

What of the old Watson?

What became of that identity, of the man who lived before the End, cared and loved, and went on adventures with Sherlock?

If he had been released as a separate soul, was Watson the dregs, the decomposing body, left to perish behind?

The identity could have perished, erased in the fit of judgment, and lost into negated nothingness. That was where he was heading – nothing. For what have he but two dead men's names and an empty flat? There existed no identity within a monster, no humanity left in a corpse, and no hope of salvation. It is this pressing void, this abstract plague, which pushes Watson to keep limping to the survivors, the hordes clawing at the doors, the survivors clinging to life – because the mere thought of purposeless inexistence is too much to comprehend. So, they cling to the familiar comfort of routines and antiquated concepts that never quite made sense.

Watson finally limped past the entrance door and into the main building.

It took a while to locate the group, it took longer carefully climbing the flights of stairs without falling too far behind or getting caught, but now Watson was safely within hearing distance of the group. It wasn't very large, there were only five members and four of them were adults. He briefly caught sight of a small girl clutched in a grey haired man's embrace. He had seen another; a young, white woman with brown hair pulled back and a bit familiar. He heard their names; Lestrade and Molly. He also knew that the other two were male as well. He hadn't seen either, but knew one had a deep voice. He knew the other existed because he counted the amount of feet running up the stairs.

They were talking now – it was difficult to understand. A lot of the words were jumbled for him, it didn't help that the need to eat pulsed louder than their whispering, or that his right leg had locked up again. He catches snippets though; time, Mycroft, _diet_, brother, _Harry,_ escape, helicopter, roof,_ suicide_, _Sherlock, dead, _Scotland. He doesn't really understand and he has stop trying to; he feels tired, the horde should have broken in by now. Then, a deep baritone interrupts his thoughts, and Watson feels something stir in his chest. It sounds like _violin_ _playing at 3am_ the lull of night setting in, and tastes like _two cuppas of warm tea _a forgotten familiarity.

Time keeps coming back up, he almost sounds frantic, then useless, experiments _eyes in the microwave, _empty flat _roommate with me?, _lost, John – and Watson's hands clench -, brother; too many words escape the man's mouth, too fast for Watson to comprehend. He hears Molly's soft footsteps towards him and the baritone snaps a curse.

"Sherlock!"

Reality ceased to exist when time stopped, the silence stretched far into a realm that goes beyond describable, and the severity of the revelation, the pure emotion that Watson felt building within the dead veins and arteries, remains incomprehensible. It didn't matter if he was dead or alive, because Sherlock was there and, even if he couldn't remember _spiderstorytellerMORIARTY _the events _the fall_ that had transpired before his un-death, couldn't recall a single memory of their adventures, he could feel every ounce of the happiness, the frustration, the anger, the sorrow, and the love that they had shared.

Sherlock was alive.

And Watson cared so much that he stumbled forward to see the missing piece to his damned soul.

Lestrade's daughter screamed first.

A man with red hair and bulging eyes shot backwards, bat arched in front. Molly gasped, eyes glassy, while Lestrade clutched his daughter closer to his chest backing closer to the group, right hand tightening on the pistol. However, Sherlock – tall, prideful, brilliant, petulant – Sherlock stayed still too shocked to react. Sherlock was the closet to Watson too, it could only take a lunge and Watson could overcome him, and sink his jaws into that pale flesh – but he didn't.

He was John Watson; he could never kill Sherlock. Yes, he could punch him, dine with him, chase culprits with him, jump fences for him, kill others for him, but never kill _him_. Regardless of all the mild suffering he put him through, the anxiety, the kidnappings and death threats; he owed Sherlock so much more, for all their adventures, their companionship, and now, his identity. He was his brief miracle. Pouring all his love and frustration, and every fragmented piece of his identity, he smiled for the last time.

_Goodbye Sherlock Holmes, my dearest friend._

Then the eyes misted over and Watson snarled lunging forward to snatch a fist of Sherlock's shirt – the zombie ricochet back and landed with a loud thump, brain matter spewing unto the steps. Sherlock stared at the corpse, at John, unable to pry his eyes away from his friend. Molly lowered the pistol, tears falling down her cheeks. Lestrade clutched his weeping daughter, his own heart clenched in agony as he lowered his own gun, but he locked eyes with the solider, Ronald, and nodded. They had to move on.

And Watson, who finally understood, did too.


End file.
